


Torn from the Morning

by dreamofhorses



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Kissing, M/M, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 06:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamofhorses/pseuds/dreamofhorses
Summary: Sometimes lookingforatardis sends me a prompt, and I threaten to steal it, and then we both write it and I refuse to read hers until I finish mine at 3:30am and then we trade. So have some pure angst based on the idea that Timmy had never felt a love like Elio had, and is afraid he never will. Can't say it strongly enough, this is sad and angsty as only 3am writing can be.





	Torn from the Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lookingforatardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforatardis/gifts).



“Come on in.” The concern in Armie’s voice says it all. Timmy never just calls on the phone. He never says he  _ needs _ to come over. He never does things on short notice.

 

“Thanks, man, I just--” Timmy bends and fumbles with his shoes. It seems like he’s taking longer than usual, messing with them to kill time. Armie wonders if he’s imagining that part. “I really need to ask you something.”

 

Armie leads them to the couch, where he’d already set a couple of beers on the coffee table just in case. Timmy ignores them, but Armie reaches for one, opens it with his lighter. Armie sits straight, facing forward, and Timmy leans his back against one armrest. Stretches his long legs,  puts his feet under Armie’s thigh. He’s always cold, always finding little ways to piggyback on Armie’s warmth, make jokes about furnaces when the idea of stealing Armie’s body heat gets to be too much, too awkward. Too close to saying something else entirely.

 

Timmy will talk when he’s ready. Armie learned this a long time ago. He sips his beer, watches a muted baseball game that he’d been watching when Timmy called. When the phone actually  _ rang _ . Armie had jumped a mile. “Tim? Is everything OK?” That’s how rare it is for Timmy to call instead of text, Facetime, DM, any of the other roughly 45 ways he could get in touch with Armie.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m just. I’m out for a walk and it’s dark and you wouldn’t be able to see me, and the service out here is shit anyway. I know this is weird, I’m weird, I know, but can I come by on the way back to the hotel? I can’t--I can’t get this out of my mind and I just need to ask you something. It’ll just be a second.”

 

“Of course, Timmy. You know that. It’s just me here, I just have the game on. Come on over.”

 

*****

 

“Is it real?” The question is clearly meant for Armie but Timmy’s asking it to the bare patch of wall across the room. “That feeling we had, that we pretended to have for all those weeks. Does it happen? Does it ever happen or did Andre make all of that up?”

 

“You mean, is that kind of love as real as towns named after letters or academics who can afford servants?” Humor. It’s his first line of defense. But when he sees Timmy’s face, which is quizzical and looks likely to fall in the next few seconds, Armie scolds himself.  _ He’s different. Remember he’s different. Just because you haven’t seen him in months doesn’t mean he doesn’t still curl up within a question and beat his way out of it from the inside. He asks things the hard way. With that openness that you need liquor to find.  _ “Hey, no, Timmy, I didn’t mean it that way. I just wanted you to laugh.” Armie rubs the top of Timmy’s foot with his hand. Usually the gesture is comforting in its mindlessness, but tonight it feels like a short-lived privilege.

 

Armie sighs, gives Timmy’s question the thought it deserves. Several minutes pass. Timmy’s sitting totally still, waiting. Expectant.  _ That never would have happened before either. He was always such a live wire _ . Except he still is. Armie can feel Timmy’s pulse in his feet, beneath Armie’s thigh. Still fast enough to set the world on fire. But now it’s been buried in a way that feels strategic, a current running through opaque glass until its spark is needed to power an undiscovered city.

 

“Yes.” He leads with the resolution, knowing that will soothe Timmy somewhat, and he can feel Timmy’s pulse slow just a little even at that small bit of knowledge. “I’ve felt that a couple of times, that feeling Elio talks about. Wanting to dissolve into someone, merge your boundaries. The obsessiveness. The willingness to give up everything, knowing how crazy that is and being willing to do it anyway. Yeah, it happens.” If Armie closes his eyes he can see them: Liz, with her gossamer strength, and before her someone darker, someone who’s always in shadow in his memory, a knife glint in her eyes. And Timmy. Whatever Timmy is to him, in him, with him. There’s no need to name it. There’s no way to name it. It just  _ is _ , in a way that Armie will be grateful for for the rest of his life.

 

Timmy exhales, deeply. He might have been holding his breath all night. This wasn’t the answer he wanted but it would have to be the answer he needed. He’d told journalists outright that he’d never experienced what Elio had. At the time it didn’t seem like such a big deal. It would come. He’d find the same feeling in other ways. So many different ways to say it didn’t matter that he no longer knew which ones were his own and which ones came from everyone around him. Except it did matter. The longer he went watching Armie have someone to go home to, the more he hung out with Giullian and Kristina and Ansel and Violetta and seen hands that just drifted together unasked after so much time seeking, the more he knew that was what he was missing. Elio still lived in him, in a world he created on faith from Andre’s words. But it felt like everyone around him could live in that world, that love, and he was within and without it, watching from the outside as everyone else lived something that he’d thought existed only in his mind.

 

“Armie, I--thanks, well, first, for being honest. It’s just been so weird lately. People keep trying to tell me what I should feel, and it’s hard enough to ignore them and actually just  _ feel  _ things, and what I keep feeling is like something’s missing. Like I left the house without my phone six months ago and I’m just now figuring out why I’ve been feeling off. I have work, I’ve had so much good rewarding work and, like, my god it’s been crazy being back in the States. I had no idea anyone noticed I was gone much less that I was gonna have to schlub around in tracksuits if I didn’t wanna be recognized.” He wiggles his toes beneath Armie’s leg and is rewarded with a smile. “But that love that we had, that I thought I pulled out of whole cloth, everyone has it, I see it, or what looks like it from the outside, and I keep going through all of this and it feels like there’s no center to it. And maybe that would be my center but it can’t be if it doesn’t even exist.”

 

He inhales, this time, deeply. “Can I--I’m gonna go soon. I just--if I’m gonna be looking for this thing all the time I might as well know if it even exists, you know?” When he smiles at Armie there’s a ruefulness to his grin, and for the first time Armie looks at Timmy’s expression and finds  _ regret _ there. “Before I go, can I kiss you? Once? As us, not characters, not anyone else, just because? If there was ever anyone I’ve known that I could find this thing with, it would probably be you after all.”

 

As Timmy’s been speaking he’s been sitting up on the couch, leaning in. Armie grins wryly. He’s never been able to tell Timmy no. “God, Tim, are you--are you putting on your ‘sexy face’ for me right now?” Armie grins at him and makes air quotes. Timmy tries to smile at the joke but Armie can tell the timing was awful and kicks himself inwardly yet again for not knowing when to give the humor a rest. Armie brings his voice down a notch, almost to a whisper. “You know I can’t tell you no. Never could. Come here.”

 

When their lips meet all Timmy has to go on are the kisses they’ve shared before. Crema sun, hot, earth under bare feet, the air holding a whiff of the lake or the rain or the waterfall. Drinking each other like men who are dying because maybe they are dying, these characters who are alive this once, these weeks, in these bodies, and may never live elsewhere. This is not those kisses. Armie’s lips are dry, unprepared, not coddled by a makeup artist. He tastes of cigarettes, beer, citrus, a drink of vodka or something like it hours ago. He kisses roughly, not without tenderness, but assertive. Oliver had been none of these things. Kissing Oliver had been like having a new world laid bare beneath you that was golden and chiseled. Armie’s kisses are rough, comfortable, willing to let you join in but unwilling to meet halfway. Timmy reaches, threads his hand through Armie’s hair, but it’s already a move borne of desperation.

 

He pulls away. 

 

“Well?” Armie asks. “Was that the kiss of a lifetime that you were looking for?”

 

“Yes.” It’s a lie. Timmy has never lied to Armie before in his life.

 

“Aww, good, T. Glad I could help.” Armie knows Timmy’s lying. He’ll never say so.

 

After the door closes behind Timmy, the same silence follows them both. It may follow them both everywhere. They’ll never speak of it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on tumblr, come say hi!


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